Granchi Taylor "breton Returning From A Fishing Trip" Brittany

Achille Granchi-Taylor, born on July 10, 1857, in Lyon and died on August 17, 1921, in Asnières-sur-Seine, was a French painter and illustrator.
Achille Granchi-Taylor’s father was an Italian immigrant and traveling salesman, and his mother was an Englishwoman, Anne-Marie Taylor, which explains his compound name, combining the surnames of both his parents. Achille Granchi-Taylor spent his youth in Paris, where he began a career as a stockbroker—a profession he quickly abandoned to devote himself entirely to painting. Early on, in Fernand Cormon’s studio, he met painters such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Émile Bernard, and Paul Gauguin, with whom he became friends and whom he joined in Pont-Aven between 1886 and 1888. He stayed at the Gloanec boarding house and also spent time with Émile Bernard and Ferdinand du Puigaudeau before settling in Concarneau in a wooden house on the seawall. He stood out in the region because he painted while wearing a frock coat, wooden clogs on his feet, and a top hat from Yokohama^. He married one of his cousins, but after living in Concarneau for some thirty years—until World War I—he finally moved to Asnières because he could not tolerate the Breton climate.

Achille Granchi-Taylor’s paintings are imbued with melancholy. A somber colorist, he soberly depicts the poverty afflicting the ports of the time, painting scenes such as fishermen returning to port and women waiting on the docks, etc., celebrating the workers of the sea and highlighting his preference for serious, even sad, scenes that reveal the resignation in their gestures and the restraint in their demeanor. In 1905, he designed the poster for La Fête des Filets Bleus, an event created that year in Concarneau to aid fishermen affected by the sardine crisis. His painting, though understated, carries a ring of truth that today serves as a historical record, as the sardine crisis was one of his favorite subjects.

Yvon Le Floc'h writes: “While many of his painter friends depicted a Brittany thriving in its traditional costumes and folklore, Achille Granchi-Taylor set out to paint its true face using a technique unique to him: charcoal enhanced with a thinning of oil paint mixed with turpentine. The result is remarkable; the fishermen’s protective oilskins, coated with linseed oil, are strikingly lifelike.” He paints using a distinctive technique, similar to that of Charles Cottet: highly diluted paint applied over a background where one can still make out the charcoal lines outlining the composition....sent for cleaning
...49/63 cm unframed